Christine O’Donnell’s new book at times reads like a guide on how not to make political campaign ad.

Thetea party-backed Republican dwells in her book on the “I am not a witch” ad – she called it “I’m you” – that played a role in sinking her Senate bid in Delaware last year.

Ms. O’Donnell’s book, “Trouble Maker,” comes out Tuesday from St. Martin’s Press. Washington Wire just read it, and recommends it only if you are eager for her side of the story on the infamous ad.

In the prologue, she offers this head-scratcher: The book is “a political memoir slash campaign diary slash position paper slash rallying cry, with an emphasis on the slash.”

The first section alternates between the highlights of her life, including her various campaigns, and flashbacks to the creation of The Ad.

So we flashback here: During the 2010 Senate campaign, comedian Bill Maher aired a 1999 video clip from an appearance by Ms. O’Donnell on his program. In it, she describes a high school beau who embraced the occult, and says she also had “dabbled in witchcraft.”

Lawyers for former Sen. John Edwards are trying to poke holes in the government’s anticipated case against the former presidential candidate, people familiar with the matter said.

John Edwards (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

After an investigation of more than two years, Mr. Edwards may face a grand jury indictment for campaign finance violations this week. Prosecutors have been investigating whether donors to political entities affiliated with Mr. Edwards funneled money to a woman with whom Mr. Edwards had an extramarital affair and fathered a child, people familiar with probe said. Plea agreement talks continue, but an indictment could come as soon as today, these people said. Defense lawyers have argued that a felony prosecution of Mr. Edwards – the 2004 Democratic vice-presidential nominee and unsuccessful 2008 Democratic presidential candidate – would be a misuse of campaign finance law. They said Mr. Edwards didn’t break the law. Key to the government’s allegations against Mr. Edwards is a 2000 Federal Election Commission advisory opinion known as Harvey, in which the commission said donors can’t get around disclosure laws just by asserting the donation isn’t linked to politics. Government lawyers, in discussions with Mr. Edwards’s lawyers, have argued the FEC opinion shows their case has precedent… Read More »

Last fall, Republicans spent millions on TV ads attacking Democrats for cutting Medicare. Those cuts—which reduced reimbursements to drug companies, hospitals and insurance companies and totaled about $500 billion over 10 years—were made to pay for the new subsidies to younger, uninsured Americans.

“Maybe Schauer’s trying to hide his own vote to cut $500 billion from Medicare,” said one typical television ad, this one targeting then-Rep. Mark Schauer (D., Mich.), who lost his re-election bid. “Let’s save Medicare, and cut Schauer.” Like others, this ad was paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

A total of about $70 million was spent on TV ads attacking Democrats on Medicare, mostly for supporting the cuts in the health care law, according to tracking by Campaign Media Analysis Group.

But Republicans may not be all that hostile to those reductions after all.

This week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, released his budget proposal. It included a major restructuring of the Medicare program, and repealed much of the Democratic health care law. But his plan keeps in place the Medicare reductions.

That annoyed several health industry groups, who agreed to the cuts in exchange for more insured Americans who would be able to pay their health care bills.

A spokesman for the House Budget Committee said that the Ryan plan allocates $10 billion to preserve the Medicare Advantage program for seniors. The health care law cut $136 billion over 10 years from that program, which allows seniors to enroll in private managed-care plans. The spokesman also noted that under the Ryan plan the Medicare spending cuts would go toward deficit reduction, rather than creation of a new spending program, as the Democratic health law creates. Read More »

Do you want to know more about how members of Congress pay their aides?

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that members of the House of Representatives who were defeated or did not run for re-election in November awarded millions of dollars in extra pay to aides as they closed down their offices.

Some of the data analysis was carried out by LegiStorm, which tracks congressional staff salaries. LegiStorm’s website has generated controversy over the years — not all Hill aides like having details of their income on the Internet — but that’s died down since House members started puttingrecords of their official spending online.

You can also check out LegiStorm’s graphs showing House staff payrolls over time, and how they spike in the fourth quarter of every year. You can also see some breakdowns by party. As we’ve noted before, Republicans and Democrats don’t differ significantly in their management practices.﻿ Read More »

Former Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, who lost her re-election bid last year, announced Wednesday that she’s joining a Washington law firm, dealing a setback to House Democrats who hoped the young centrist from South Dakota would run again.

Rep. Steve Israel (D., N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said last month he would “love” to have Ms. Herseth Sandlin back in the House come 2012.

Today, the 40-year-old former congresswoman said there is “less than a 50% chance” of that. “Political timing is a tricky thing,” she said in an interview with Washington Wire. “This is the right move for me right now.”

Ms. Herseth Sandlin heads to Olsson Frank Weeda Terman Bode Matz PC, a Washington law firm, where she will weigh in on regulatory matters, public policy and litigation. While in Congress, she worked on the Agriculture and Natural Resource committees.

Ms. Herseth Sandlin, first elected in 2004, was a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition.

Democrats hope several congressmen defeated in last year’s GOP wave, including Dan Maffei and Michael McMahon of New York as well as Melissa Bean and Bill Foster of Illinois, would consider running again for their old seats. But the trick is convincing them things will be different in 2012.

Ms. Bean, who lost by about 300 votes in November, announced Monday she will become the CEO of the Executives’ Club of Chicago. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Read More »

Texas Rep. Ron Paul won an annual straw poll in Washington this week that may say more about the organizing capacity of his supporters than the tastes of Republican primary voters as a whole.

Mr. Paul, a libertarian favorite whose backers packed the Marriot Wardman Park Hotel near the zoo, won 30% of the vote in the annual Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, an early frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, came in second, with 23%.

Those results mirrored last year’s straw poll, said Tony Fabrizio, the Republican pollster who tabulates the ballots.

The bad news for each of the prospective candidates is that 43% of the 3,742 conservative activists who voted in the straw poll expressed some dissatisfaction with the field. Voters also expressed grave skepticism that the new Republican majority in the House would accomplish what they sent new GOP lawmakers to do — repeal President Barack Obama’s new health-care law and pare the deficit.

“Those should be disquieting results for members of Congress,” said David Keene, the outgoing chairman of the American Conservatives Union, which organizes the annual event.

The three-day confab gave 2012 hopefuls a chance to test applause lines and pay their respects to the conservative activists who play an influential role in the nomination process. Read More »

Seeking to curry favor with the winners of the November elections, companies and business groups have flooded new House Republicans with money.

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio participates in a ceremonial swearing in with Rep. Tom Marino (R., Pa.) on Jan. 5. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

New campaign-finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission late Monday show that companies have given about $2 million in campaign donations to the 80 or so newly elected Republicans in the period between Election Day and the end of the year.

In many cases, the donations to the freshman Republicans came after the companies supported their Democratic opponents in the election.

Companies are generally cautious in how they dole out campaign funds from their political action committees, nearly always donating to incumbents – regardless of party affiliation. Last year, for example, companies gave most of their campaign donations to Democrats. But Republicans won the election.

Whoops.

So now companies have reversed course and are scrambling to give money to new House Republicans… Read More »

What’s right for Massachusetts isn’t necessarily right for Florida – or New Hampshire, for that matter.

That’s the basic argument former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney made Tuesday in defense of his state’s health-care law during a pair of television appearances to promote his book, “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness” – and, ostensibly, a second presidential bid.

The Massachusetts law, which Mr. Romney signed and helped to craft, includes a requirement that most residents carry health insurance. It has emerged as an early liability for Mr. Romney, a Republican, in his expected bid for the White House.

Mr. Romney said he agreed with the federal judge in Florida who on Monday ruled a similar mandate in the federal health-care law runs afoul of the Constitution, and he sought to distinguish what he did as governor in Massachusetts and what President Barack Obama — his potential opponent — wants to do nationally… Read More »

The political action committee for the Bentonville, Ark., firm cut checks to 19 new members of Congress in December, many of whom won close races and none of whom had previously received money from the retail giant this election. The donations were often small compared with the money some campaigns owed.

Representatives for Wal-Mart did not return a request for comment by Friday evening.The company spent more than $4 million on lobbying last year, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Newly elected Rep. Rick Berg (R., N.D.) had about $46,000 left in his campaign account on Nov. 22 and owed nearly $190,000 after a tough campaign against former Democratic Rep. Earl Pomeroy, according to FEC filings. Wal-Mart sent him $1,000. The company also sent Republican Rep. Bobby Schilling, a pizza parlor owner from East Moline, Ill., and a tea party favorite, the same amount. Mr. Schilling owed $61,000 as of November and about $16,000 in the bank… Read More »

A new poll by a left-leaning strategy group suggests that Democrats continue to underperform among some key elements of their base, including young voters, unmarried women and union households.

Those groups were vital to Democrats’ success in 2008, but they’ve been hit hard since then by continuing job-market weakness.

Republicans could now be driving those voters back into the Democratic fold by pursuing priorities in Congress such as deficit reduction that don’t directly address joblessness, according to the new poll. The poll was conducted by Democracy Corps, a project created by pollster Stan Greenberg and strategist James Carville.

“The new Congress is about to get it very wrong,” Democracy Corps warns in a memo accompanying the poll results. The poll suggests that voters believe Washington’s top priorities should be economic recovery and jobs.

Cutting spending and addressing deficits also rate high among voters’ concerns. But so do protecting Social Security and Medicare – two programs that likely would be targeted by any major deficit-reduction effort. And voters appear to be easily persuaded to oppose other possible cuts too, according to the poll.

The survey shows that many voters respond favorably to the idea that government deficits are best addressed through boosting economic growth rather than spending cuts.

That could foreshadow increased use of the idea, although it’s been rejected by the Democratic co-chairman of Mr. Obama’s fiscal-responsibility panel, Erskine Bowles.

“We can’t grow our way out of this,” Mr. Bowles said last year. “We could have decades of double-digit growth and not grow our way out of this enormous debt problem.” Read More »

About Washington Wire

Washington Wire is one of the oldest standing features in American journalism. Since the Wire launched on Sept. 20, 1940, the Journal has offered readers an informal look at the capital. Now online, the Wire provides a succession of glimpses at what’s happening behind hot stories and warnings of what to watch for in the days ahead. The Wire is led by Reid J. Epstein, with contributions from the rest of the bureau. Washington Wire now also includes Think Tank, our home for outside analysis from policy and political thinkers.